How to use the draft portal
There is no such thing as the rankings.
A points league that pays three a goal and a category league that counts hits and blocks are two different games. A list that does not know which one you are in is a list of good hockey players, which is a different thing from a draft board. The portal exists to make that distinction, and the fastest way to show it is to let you watch it happen.
So set one up. The five players below are ranked against the whole 880-man pool, and the ranking is computed in your browser by the same code the draft room runs. Change the teams, the roster shape or the categories and watch them move.
Valuing the board…
They were picked to disagree with each other: a generational scorer, a two-way centre, a man who leads the league in hits and does little else, a young puck-moving defenceman and a goaltender. No set of categories flatters all five.
The roster shape moves them as much as the categories do, because replacement is measured per position. Start four goalies instead of two and Linus Ullmark climbs from around a hundredth to the high forties without a single number about him changing. Start six defencemen and Jackson LaCombe does the same.
One thing you will not see move: pooling forwards into F slots prices identically to splitting them into centres and wings, as long as the totals match. That is deliberate. Six F slots and two centres plus two of each wing are the same league, and the board treats them as one.
Turn everything off except hits, blocks and penalty minutes and Connor McDavid falls from sixth to about four hundred and fiftieth while Kiefer Sherwood climbs into the twenties. That is not a broken board. That is what a league scoring only those three categories actually values, and if it is your league then the standard rankings are describing somebody else's.
The number on the right is value over replacement, not a category total. Replacement is measured per position, against the last defenceman or centre who would actually start in a league that size, which is why the fourth defenceman and the fourth centre with identical category scores are not identical picks. It is the number the board sorts on because it is the number that answers what a pick is worth.
Getting set up
1. Tell it your league. Draft settings takes teams, your draft slot, roster slots and scoring. Get the roster slots right in particular: they set replacement level, and a league that starts four defencemen values them very differently from one that starts two. If your league pools forwards into F slots rather than splitting centre and wing, enter it that way. The board handles it.
2. Choose where the numbers come from. The default is our projection set. You can also draft off last season's totals, last season's per-game rates, the final twenty games, an outside list, or a blend of ours with theirs. If you disagree with us about a player, the Advanced Sandbox lets you edit lines, ice time and production directly, and the board reads whatever you build.
3. Set your position source. The three sites disagree about who is eligible where, and drafting off the wrong one means being told you can fill a slot your league will refuse. The default is the published Yahoo sheet, which carries dual eligibility for 198 players; ESPN lists 160 and Fantrax 180, and they are not the same 160. Selecting ESPN or Fantrax scopes both the eligibility and the draft positions to that site's own numbers. If you have linked a Yahoo league, the board reads that league's eligibility live instead, because your own league is a better answer than any published sheet.
The three rooms
| Room | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Prep | Before the day. Build your queue, set category weights, tag players, and read the board without a clock running. |
| Mock | A full draft against bots that reach and slide the way a real room does, so you can find out what actually falls to your slot. |
| Live | Draft night. You enter each pick, which means it works for any site and for a room with a whiteboard. |
The workbook is the fourth option and the one to take if you would rather not depend on a website at all on the night. It builds an Excel file for your exact league with live formulas, so you type picks into the board and your needs, values and dollar figures recalculate in the sheet.
Things worth knowing
The ledger is the point of the live room. It tracks what your roster still needs and re-prices the board against it, so a player who would be the best available in the abstract drops when you already have three of him. You can build your own conditions, up to five of them, on position, age, contract year, team and the categories themselves.
Value and price are different columns. Value over replacement says what a player is worth. Draft position says what he costs. The gap between them is the entire game, and both are on the board so you can see it rather than remember it.
Punting is a setting, not a strategy you keep in your head. Drop a category from your league and the board re-values everyone without it. If you intend to concede penalty minutes, tell it, and stop being shown players whose case rests on a category you are giving away.
Keepers come off the board. Enter them before the draft and the men are gone and the picks they cost are accounted for. The next pick the board offers is the first empty slot, not the one after the last keeper you typed.
If something goes wrong
The board refusing your settings is worth reporting rather than working around. It is a bug on our side, not a limit on your league, and there is a Feedback button on every page. A recent one refused every league that pooled forwards into F slots instead of splitting centre and wing, which is a completely normal way to run a league and one we had simply not handled.
Projections are the set the portal, the workbook and the projections page all read. Draft positions come from the public ESPN and Fantrax boards. The demo above is our 2026-27 projections, valued live.